I've been getting very close to most of the mobile platforms on the market today, and wanting to summarize my thoughts about their potential impact on mobile research. Seeing
Samantha's February 25th post about smartphone market share, a brain-dump on the subject should dovetail nicely...
Looking back on key announcements over the past year, Google, Apple and more recently Microsoft have made the most significant splashes in terms of mobile innovation. However, when the dust settles we still see Nokia and Research in Motion (RIM) leading the charge with 47% and 20%, respectively, of the mobile OS market in 2009. Why is this the case, and what can we expect to see moving forward?
I believe the current mobile market is a race between 5 horses, but I will not count others out over the long term due to the still-early nature of this arena. The key players today are:
- Apple: since its release, the iPhone has set the bar for smartphone usability; its slightly thinner sibling, the iPod touch, is the definition of a sleek, modern Personal Digital Assistant (PDA); and the forthcoming iPad is one of the most anticipated products of all time. Simply put, Apple has a lot of swagger and momentum in the mobile space. But Apple runs a very closed environment that people either love or hate, and this creates opportunities for other more open platforms to shine. Also, while Apple has done very well in the consumer space, it has made fewer inroads into the enterprise, where RIM and Microsoft thrive.
- Research in Motion (RIM): the BlackBerry is one of the most impressive brands of our time. While RIM is often considered less marketing savvy than Apple, I would suggest that their marketing tactics have been every bit as effective as Apple's -- just different. Despite a barrage of criticism about the sexiness and usability of their products, RIM continues to grow and profit at an astounding rate. I personally questioned the usability of BlackBerry products compared to more elegant competitors like iPhone and Android, but I have come to appreciate them as solid, enterprise-worthy devices, and to see the company as a very savvy player in the mobile space. RIM has developed very deep roots with both wireless carriers and enterprise IT departments, as well as a powerful brand that is almost synonymous with thumb-typing on a mobile phone.
- Nokia: the Nokia/Symbian world is complicated. Having personally handled dozens of Nokia phones, I would summarize that their strength is in their diversity of offerings to multiple levels of the marketplace. This is also their weakness. With countless products, three current operating systems, and a solid-but-aging feel on much of their hardware, it is hard to believe that Nokia still outsells its nearest smartphone competitor at more than a 2-to-1 ratio. But while they are not as strong in North America, Nokia is a major player in Europe and downright dominant in many other regions of the world. It is hard to discount a company that produces over 1 million phones per day (yes, you read that correctly). With the incredible depth of carrier relationships and distribution channels which they have developed, Nokia's challenge now is to fill those channels with products that compete with their ever-growing range of competitors.
- Google: Google has garnered a lot of attention since announcing the open-source (and freely available) Android platform in 2007. By providing a smartphone operating system that is free and extensible, Android has garnered support from dozens of handset manufacturers including major players like Motorola and HTC. In contrast to Apple, Google's greatest strength (and weakness) is its openness. I am personally very impressed with most of the Android devices I have used, and as a consumer I have great optimism that Android will be a force to be reckoned with in mobile technology. But I also recognize that openness can lead to fragmentation, and I've heard a lot of grumbling from developers about the lack of standards on Android devices. As Microsoft learned when it allowed device manufacturers and wireless carriers to customize experiences based on its Windows Mobile platforms, I believe that the many emerging flavours of Android devices will make it difficult for developers to target. That said, I believe that Google's ability to integrate the mobile experience with all of their other web-based services will make it a formidable player in the mobile space, and I believe the fragmentation issue can be overcome as Google and other Android licensees learn to coexist.
- Windows Mobile: I recently spoke about the forthcoming Windows 7 Phone Series, so I won't repeat myself on the details. Suffice to say that I think Microsoft has re-entered the mobile race, and demonstrated that they are not planning to turn away from this increasingly important battlefield. Microsoft has learned a lot of lessons over more than a decade in mobile computing, and I believe their enterprise roots will serve them well as they re-assert themselves with a brand new mobile platform. What remains to be seen is whether Microsoft can garner enough consumer interest to unseat competitors in the mass market, or whether it will continue to play a more niche role as an enterprise solution.
I have not even mentioned the likes of
Palm (webOS),
Samsung (bada),
Linux Mobile (LiMo), or expanded on the now open-source
Symbian OS (the Nokia-bred OS that was recently spun off as a freely available platform). And there are others... but the rabbit hole is simply too deep to cover here, so I will get back to the purpose of my post: to discuss the impact of mobile platform trends on market research.
There are fundamentally two ways to engage people on their mobile devices in a data-intensive way: (1) via their web browser; and (2) using a downloadable application.
- Mobile web browsers are improving in capability and usability, and are finally emerging as a lowest-common-denominator approach to mobile engagement. If you need to reach a lot of people in a relatively shallow way, e.g. to conduct a brief mobile survey about a product or experience, then a mobile browser may well be the way to go. Although mobile browsers are still fragmented, the emergence of mobile web technologies such as HTML 5, JavaScript, CSS and Adobe Flash are making it more viable to reach a wide mobile audience.
- Downloadable applications provide a richer user experience for applications such as diary studies and mobile panels, but they are typically harder to deploy to a broad range of users. Also dovetailing with Sean's recent post about quality over quantity, I would argue that in many cases a more select audience that is highly engaged is more valuable than a broad audience that is minimally engaged. It is these cases -- for example digital ethnography with alarms to trigger highly contextual questions at random times -- where mobile apps really shine.
Bear with me as I attempt to tie all of this information together...
The mobile jungle is in some ways becoming more wild every day, but I am also seeing signs that a handful of gorillas may be starting to establish some turf. While I don't believe that all five gorillas outlined here will win over the long term, each one represents sufficient market share and resources to be considered as key players for the foreseeable future. With that in mind, I think we will begin to see some stabilization of mobile platforms, resulting in more reliable ways to reach the masses via both web browsers and downloadable applications.
For the next while solutions focused on mobile research will have to choose between "wide and shallow" or "narrow and deep" -- i.e. either focus on reaching a broad range of people with a more basic level of engagement, or on providing a high level of engagement within a more narrow scope of users. I don't feel that one is inherently better than the other, and both represent significant opportunities within the burgeoning mobile research space.
Over the long term the two paths that I have identified will converge. In the meantime, having invested a lot of time and energy developing methods to engage people in a deep and meaningful way, I am a big believer in the power of rich mobile applications.
With over 3 Billion application downloads in less than 18 months, Apple has more than proven the viability of downloadable apps, and all other major platforms have since poured significant resources into their own mobile app stores.
Over the next while it is prudent to focus on the five key players I have identified here:
Apple,
RIM,
Nokia,
Google and
Microsoft. But peripheral vision is often what sets the great apart from the good, so I allow my eyes to wander a bit in search of innovative smaller players that might just have a thing or two to teach the gorillas.
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